“Such perfect movement!”
“How is she doing this?”
“Beautiful…”
Various murmurs and exclamations came from the audience. They were all entranced by the beautiful figure and her movements projected on the screen in front of them.
Lunete Argall sat at a desk on stage. In her hand was an acupuncture needle. Without any visual aids, she was carving the Taoist deities on it.
Lunete was at her own art exhibition where she showcased her completed micro artworks. She was doing a live creation of micro art with the assistance of a member of the audience who was chosen at random. The lucky man who was chosen happened to be a Taoist acupuncture practitioner. Therefore, he had requested for his needle to be engraved and had provided a picture of a banquet of the jade emperor and his subjects as reference material for Lunete.
At this moment, Lunete has long since created the outlines of each deity on the needle. She was already halfway through adding the fine details to each of the deities. Slowly but surely, she made various minute movements that brought each deity to life on the needle and gave them extremely realistic features. Eventually, Lunete completed this latest masterpiece and presented it to the excited Chinese man.
As the man walked off the stage with a joyful skip in his step, Lunete waved at the audience, “Thank you all for coming here tonight, and I hope that all of you would enjoy the artworks after this.”
Lunete then walked backstage as she let an emcee take over for her. She went into her breakroom and took a towel to clean up the sweat on her forehead. It had taken a lot of her concentration to create that piece of artwork on a needle without any visual aids. The details were surprisingly difficult to create. In the end, it was only due to her constant practice that she was able to feel the tiny movements on her arms and know the result of her every action.
Sitting on a couch in her breakroom to rest, Lunete tilted her head back as she recovered from her mental fatigue. She had various influential people to meet after this, and she had to be mentally alert.
***
Lunete sat on her chair at her desk at home. Tonight’s art exhibition was a success. The art work tonight was sold to the highest bidders and she had once again earned a considerable sum of money.
By the time the forty-year old woman had reached home, it was early in the morning. She had considered asking her early-rising live-in female fitness trainer to join her in some early morning “exercise” before she went off to sleep. Imagining the tantalizing, sexy curves of the Chinese woman was extremely tempting, but she decided that she wanted something more intellectually stimulating instead.
Lunete put on the SRI (Supplemented Reality Interface) glasses on her face as she thumbed the switch. A sentimental expression filled her countenance as she looked at the welcome screen that floated in front of her.
The SRI glasses was a memento of her deceased parents. Born into a family with a Welsh father and a Chinese mother, Lunete was blessed with beautiful features and a well-endowed body. She had truly grown into her name, taken from the Arthurian Romantic Eluned, and meant image or idol from the Welsh word “eilun”.
At the age of fourteen, Lunete’s father passed away. Being an orphan himself, her father had drilled independence into Lunete. Therefore, she had tried to support her mother through their grief.
However, Lunete’s mother went half-mad from the loss of her beloved. In between bouts of insanity, Lunete arranged with her mother to move back to China to receive the support of her Chinese parents. Lunete’s maternal grandparents were welcoming, but had a greedy look in their eyes. They saw Lunete’s family as merely an additional source of money as Lunete’s parents were quite rich from being accomplished artists.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
A year after the Argall family head’s passing, Lunete’s mother finally went fully mad. She had committed suicide in her insanity. Thankfully, Lunete had arranged for her parents to transfer over to her after their passing and she immediately left her maternal grandparents to live on her own.
Living a male-centric part of China was tough on Lunete. As with all extremely chauvinist areas, she was often approached and nearly forced into undesirable situations had she not had a strong front and various items to protect herself. She had developed a strong dislike for men.
When her dislike for men grew strong enough, Lunete bought her own house and quit school. She decided to throw herself into art to follow in her parents’ footsteps.
Remembering that her father said that he started off as an artist by selling pieces of art as useful items in a game, Lunete dug through her father’s belongings. She took out his SRI glasses and put it on. It was then, that her career as an artist started out.
In the present, with just a thought, Lunete selected the floating icon of the game in front of her. Another welcome message popped up from the game. Lunete looked at the game UI and smiled. She had long since hit the level cap of the game and unlocked all the crafting content that the game provided. She had leveled slowly from crafting unlike many of the other users who chose to fight virtual monsters that popped up from the projected scenery that the game provided.
Lunete forged a needle from the material creator interface and she began reproducing the needle that she had engraved the previous night. It took her a while, but she had finally completed the piece. She had also added various fantasy engravings that provided powerful status boosts to whoever wielded the needle, including one that allowed the needle to be shot out and returned to the hand of the user.
Satisfied with her handiwork, Lunete stored the needle into her inventory and relaxed into her chair. She was about to log out of the game when a brilliant light shone from beneath her. A glowing circle with various complicated runic characters pulsed from beneath her. With each pulse, a wave of pain surged through Lunete.
The pain that Lunete felt was so intense that it made her whole body lock up. Her body straightened as she was forced to look up at the ceiling. A greater amount of pain suddenly flashed around her eyes. It felt like the SRI glasses was melting into her skin. Lunete managed to wrench her mouth open in a soundless scream. Soon, oxygen deprivation from the lack of ability to breathe during the pain forced her into unconsciousness.
As Lunete slid into the embrace of unconsciousness, the light from the circle intensified and enveloped her entire being.
===
Author’s notes:
Author of Heaven’s Awakening here. This is the second fiction that I had cooked up. I’m not abandoning my first fiction, but I just had a sudden “brilliant” idea and wanted to type it down and submit to rrl. I hope that those who felt that my prologue in Heaven’s Awakening was too lacking can find some solace here.
To those that don’t know, the SRI glasses is a parody of the ARI glasses from the game Heavy Rain without the negative consequences. There's also no need for gloves as the glasses has neurological sensors that registers the user's movements and selections.